Fasting isn't dieting!

"Surely you should eat a healthy diet all the year round - so what is the point of giving up things you like for Lent?"

Lent has nothing to do with dieting! Loose weight and you will be healthier, probably, but quite possibly not happier. Dieting tends to proceed from anxiety or vanity or both, and, as George Jonas has said, is the "strange postmodern ritual of living so as to produce the most attractive possible corpse." So diet away, folks, and you will be leaner and more elegant if you persist - but not necessarily better people or happier people.

Fasting, for which Lent is the great Christian season, has positive and negative implications. Negatively, when you fast you are saying to yourbodily appetites - "You are not in charge of my life." In an age where obesity, alcoholism and thoughtless indulgence of every appetite are
epidemic amongst us, with all the wretchedness they bring in their wake, perhaps that's a statement we all need to make. Life is about more than what we eat or drink, or who we sleep with. Lent is a time for putting our appetites in their place!

Positively, in fasting we say to our appetites, "You are not in control here - God is!". That is the key to the ancient story of Jesus struggling with the temptations set before him by the Satan in the wilderness. Despite the obvious attractions of food after a forty day fast, power over his own destiny and a mighty object of worship. He saw,as so many of his followers have seen, that to get out of our own way and let God do his work in our lives is the way to a life worth living.

No-one has put this better than Isaiah in chapter 58:-

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry, and he will say, “Here I am.”
If you take away the yoke from your midst,
the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
if you pour yourself out for the hungry
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness
and your gloom be as the noonday.

And the LORD will guide you continually
and satisfy your desire in scorched places
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to dwell in.

Our world, our community, needs those who will fast in that spirit!